When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is great. People who know what they are doing know the rules, and know what is possible and impossible. You do not. And you should not. – Neil Gaiman, “Make Good Art”
Sometimes, you need to forget the rules. You need to stop thinking about what is possible or impossible and just go after whatever it is. You have to take a leap and trust you’ll figure out what you’re doing as you either soar across the sky or plummet to the bottom. Both scenarios require knowledge and action, and both provide opportunities for learning and growth.
To forget the rules isn’t to forget the basics. If you’re a writer, you use the foundation you have. It’s just that you quit clinging tightly to that foundation. You quit looking at your feet to make sure the foundation is still there and start looking up. You know and trust that the foundation is there and rest upon it, but you allow yourself to dream. You begin to dwell in the land of “what if.” You begin to build, and building requires a letting go of certainty and rules.
To build is to poke the boundaries with a stick. If it isn’t returned to you as a charred crisp, you move forward. If it is, you try something else. Either you move to a different location, or you use a different substance for your test. To build is to apply what you know in different ways. It’s to gain new knowledge, to add it to your lexicon, and to try new things based on that fuller understanding. It’s to step to the edge of the cliff and look down and ponder how you can fly to another height or scale down the rocky side. It’s to measure everything – not to the extent that you don’t move or become stuck in a debate of possible and impossible – and to make the attempt. It’s to forget the rules and to observe what happens in that forgetting. It’s to embrace the idea that you have no idea what you are doing, but you are all right with that fact. A lack of knowledge isn’t worrisome to you anymore. Clinging to the rules and never going anywhere is.
Image: Ryan Godfrey (Creative Commons)